Things that go boom in the morning.....

Yesterday I got up, went to the clinic, opened my email, and boom- there's a small explosion heard in the distance.  Bummer.  Back to the email.  A few minutes later- BOOM!  That ones much closer or bigger.  You could feel it.  Time to head to the bunkers I guess.  I open the door and the military comes over the radio and informs us that something just blew up in downtown Tikrit.  No problem, back to the computer.  We found out later that one of them was a car bomb that had been detonated outside a police station in town and the other was a car bomb outside of the police academy.  I still haven't heard how many casualties they had......
 
You have to wonder about the mentality of people who criticize us for our inability to control the violence when they keep blowing up their own people.  Muslims anyways; I still don't believe most of them are Iraqis. 
 
I got to meet some of the T-wall crew today.  T-walls are concrete structures that look like inverted Ts; they are placed around the camp and various buildings as blast shielding.  They complement the Hescos.  They form the bases with rebar sticking out of them then when they're cured they put more forms up, secure the vertical rebar structure, and then pour the concrete.  These are big structures and they build scaffolding beside them and then the plan is to pump concrete ito the forms.  The scaffolding is dried out logs/sticks.  I wonder how many Iraqis are killed each year by falling off rickety, dried out, poorly braced scaffolding.  Ish Allah! (however you spell it).  At times, I'm impressed with the inginuity of third world countries and at other times I wonder why they don't use they're brains and come up with better, safer, means of doing stuff.
 
I need to figure out a way to keep my National Registry certification up.  That is going to be my project for Tuesday. 
 
I've been sending Eric quotes for the day.  I hope he is enjoying them.  Hang in there Bro! 
 
Mike, if you read this email me.
 
I ordered more books today including the Special Operations Forces Medical Handbook.  I would recomend it to anyone who is interested in remote medicine, self sufficiency, etc.  It has a lot of good info on diagnosing and treating common illnesses and injuries; it's also about $60.  This is to compliment my copy of the Physician Assistant's Clinical Companion, Drugs for Bugs, and a few other books I've bought. 
 
I also went ahead and added a copy of Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan) and Concert for George (tribute to George Harrison) as well as two adventure travel books.  I've started reading at night again, something I had gotten away from at home when I played on the computer instead of reading.  I knocked out The DaVinci Code in two nights; good book, I enjoyed the plot and the research.  I've been thinking about buying one of those compact portable DVD players to watch movies at night though.  I'm not a big movie person, but I don't alway feel like reading.  The Hadjis sell bootleg copies of movies for about $5-7.  There are probably several hundred movies floating around this camp.  
 
Feel free to send me books that I might like, hell, send me anything.
 
I'm eagerly awaiting my mail.  Lot's of people here order stuff just so they get stuff in the mail.  It's not like you can drop what you're doing and take a day off to go shopping.
 
Hey, Sean called just now!  First call I've gotten since I've been over here.  It was good to hear your voice.  Glad you guys are doing well!  Hey Ed and MaryAnn!
 
time for bed...............